Greetings, potion magnates!
We’ve been looking forward to enriching Potion Tycoon with exciting additional contents and mechanics from its first day in Early Access. And despite a slight detour we took with the previous quality of life update, we kept working hard on some new features that would make Potion Tycoon’s core gameplay more dynamic, more varied and, ultimately, more entertaining. Today we finally began to realize our original EA roadmap as the game’s first proper content update, “Manias & Disasters'', has just gone live!
First and foremost, this major update brings a bunch of brand-new random events to your shopkeeper’s table. Not only will these spontaneous encounters change how Potion Tycoon looks, sounds and feels every so often - they will also affect the way you play it on a more fundamental level. Unprompted and rampant, they are going to catch you off-guard and shake up your firmly established business flow with amended needs to satiate, sudden threats to avert and fleeting opportunities to seize. Simply put, expect less routine and more chaos with their arrival. But remember - it’s that kind of chaos that can turn the tides and bring fabulous rewards!
Additionally we'll introduce two public branches which are inteded to smooth out your playing experience during early access. See more details in the changelog below.
But enough words - just go explore firsthand what this new Potion Tycoon update has to offer. Hey, and don’t forget to let us know how you liked it - we hold our breath for it!
Bewitchingly yours,
Snowhound Games and Daedalic Entertainment
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Changelog:
Changes:
- Added random events of two types: [**] Manias (Bone Fever, Monster Mania, Calling The Ghosts): manic customers run into the shop searching for a specific type of potion; [**] Disasters (Skeleton Invasion, Monster Emergency, Ghostly Mess): monsters emerge and spook both approaching workers and customers, though workers can be commanded to banish them if the corresponding repelling potion is in stock; [**] Disasters usually follow upon Manias of the corresponding type; [**] All events are accompanied with themed visual environmental effects; [**] All events have custom music themes played in the background.
- Added 3 new reward artifacts for ending invasion events: Skeleton Memorial, Stone Ogre and Phantom Statue.
- The event widget shows the approximate duration for the active event.
- Potions that are trending (Hot) due to an active event will now sell better.
- Added more custom animations for the Supporter Pack witch.
- Added two more department sizes. Departments can now be Small, Medium (previously Large), Large (previously Grand), Grand or Royal.
- Added 3 new goals (Pharmacy, Sorcery Superstore and Adventure Arcade), one to each goal branch.
- Enabled all artifacts to be placed anywhere in the house, including staircases.
- Event requests' deadline cannot be extended anymore. You can only deliver something immediately or fail the quest when time runs out for a request.
Balancing:
- Major balancing update to improve the pacing of the game: [**] early game made slightly easier [**] reduced likelihood of randomly getting unfavorable starting conditions [**] more steadily increasing challenge as the game progresses [**] numerous balancing changes across the board: [***] potion price points [***] container prices [***] alchemy modifier values [***] ingredient properties [***] potion attribute appeal modifiers [***] worker salaries (and some worker traits) [***] purchasable item prices [***] request requirements
- multiple changes to research paths
- both difficulty levels affected.
- Product creation update: [**] Added Neutral price tag which replaces Fair price tag as the 0% appeal tag. Fair now gives +5% appeal and is one step below Neutral. All other price tags below Fair were shifted down one step. [**] Changed price bracket colorization to have 3 "optimal" green spaces (Neutral, Fair and Bargain), 2 "viable" yellow spaces (Pricey and Blowout) and all of the rest are with red implying either no benefits or heavy penalty on appeal. [**] Price point now increases by one step whenever grade surpasses the next whole number. Previously price points were at: 1st price point: 0.5-1.49 grade, 2nd price point 1.5-2.49, 3rd price point 2.5-3.49. Now price points are at: 1st price point 0-0.9, 2nd price point 1-1.9, 3rd price point 2-2.9 and so on.
- Increased the Welcoming trait customer action point bonus from 4 to 12.
- Increased the customer action point bonus for every curiosity artifact (from 8 to 12 for Jar Of Wishes, Wisebeak, Spirit Trap, Old Friend, Mystery Object, Unicorn Shoe, Preserved Troll, Petrified Skull, Grim Pumpkin and from 6 to 8 for the Wheel Of Divination).
- Marketing Rite now requires a Veteran Clerk (instead of Master), costs 15TP instead of 20, has a base success chance of 50% (instead of 30%) and yields bigger boosts to launch marketing.
- Grand Cooker, Big Kettle and Big Mortar now require Veteran workers (instead of Adept).
- Re-adjusted Fame and Appeal increases in all marketing and branding actions.
Fixes:
- Fixed some interactions between the quest deadline choice and delivery picker that could lead to UI problems.
- Items carried by workers and waiting in machine outputs are now considered when checking storage targets.
- The Continue button now behaves more consistently and should always reload the latest save. The game is also saved on exit.
- Fixed crash when closing the game during intro videos.
- The “For hire” workers list now avoids duplicate worker names. Existing saves may still have duplicates in the list until it is refreshed. (Also note that you can rename workers in the Ledger).
- Various localization fixes.
- Fixed event requests showing wrong portrait and letter icon in the quest reminder.
- Fixed Sorbus generic "Thank You"-dialogue showing !loc warning for what's supposed to be an empty space except when the player had just completed the Field Trip quest.
- Fixed Cabinet refills sometimes getting stuck if the worker could not find a crate.
- Fixed Issue where a newly built item could stay outside a room after canceling construction in some situations.
- Fixed customers sometimes turning around for a split second when exiting the shop.
- Fixed tutorials and goals related to stocking potions getting completed in some places where they shouldn't.
- Fixed customers sometimes spawning/despawning too close to the house depending on the entrance locations.
- Fixed Growth Lamp not showing tooltip on hover.
- Some animation-related optimization - should result in slightly less CPU load depending on the amount of objects.
- Fixed issue where potion appeal wasn't checked properly in Ledger/Segments.
- Fixed issue where player potions weren't shown properly in Ledger/Segments if the player didn't have any superior potions.
- Fixed customers getting away without paying if they could not find their way to a Cash Register. Now they will go through non-shop rooms if necessary, and if they still can't pay, the potions are moved back to Shop Cabinets.
- Fixed Alchemy Labs not being checked for existing potion orders when determining whether a potion can be deleted or not.
- Fixed equipment status icon tooltips being covered by other item pop-ups when on top of each other.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when a room construction order was canceled after being assigned to a worker.
- Fixed issues where sorting player and rival houses in Ledger/Leaderboard based on multiple different stats wasn't executed properly.
- Fixed issue where unprocessed ingredients weren't properly marked in Ledger/Ingredients if their storage targets were reached.
Public branches:
With this update we establish two public branches you can use if you encounter issues to see if the builds provided there help you to improve your experience. These branches are opt-in and of course our goal is to polish and improve the game continously to make these branches obsolotete as soon as possible.
- rollback: in this branch you'll find the version without the latest update, in case you encounter issues with new content or features.
- experimental-public: unstable and mostly untested iterations of the game that are currently in the works to be released soon that may help with issues we already fixed in this branch without having them rolled out to the public yet.
To get into these branches, right-click on the game in your library list, choose 'Properties' and then 'Betas...', in the following window, please choose the according branch from the dropdown menu.